Daniel C. Peterson's Blog, page 1085

“Why we should legalize murder for hire”

    Nathaniel Hancock shares an amusing and pointed bit of satire with me:   http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/art...    

Faith and science

    “Science has faith. We make postulates. We can’t prove those postulates, but we have faith in them.” Charles H. Townes (Nobel Prize in Physics, 1964) Dr. Townes believed that “science and religion [are] quite parallel, much more similar than most people think and that in the long run, they must converge.”  “Science,” he wrote, [Read More...]

“‘Thou hast testified of me’”

    Shon Hopkin, Martin Tanner, and Bruce Webster join to discuss selected passages from Acts 21-23 and Acts 26-28 (2015 Gospel Doctrine lesson 38) in this, the 136th scripture roundtable posted  by the Interpreter Foundation:   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/scri...    

“‘Heat Dome’ in Middle East is Ravaging Region’s Residents”

    We have friends in the Middle East who’re reporting considerable discomfort, and no wonder:   http://www.attn.com/stories/2621/midd...   Thanks to Doug Ealy for bringing this article to my attention.    

“Traces of the Gospel in Four Great Islamic Classics”

    Just as a reminder, these are the subjects on which I’ll be holding forth at BYU Education Week over the next few days — in my typically vicious, ad hominem, and dishonest way:   Daniel C. Peterson Traces of the Gospel in Four Great Islamic Classics Assembly Hall, Hinckley Center (HC), 1:50–2:45 p.m. [Read More...]

“A House of Order, A House of God: Recycled Challenges to the Legitimacy of the Church”

    The magnificent Cassandra Hedelius, on certain recent phenomena that she calls “Mormon gnosticism”:   http://ldsmag.com/a-house-of-order-a-...    

“Why animal lovers should abhor Planned Parenthood”

    By now, you may be aware of the videos showing senior officials of Planned Parenthood as, over lunch with wine, they matter-of-factly discuss the dismemberment of unborn babies and the selling of their retrieved body parts — while light-heartedly referring to the “crunching” of little human bones and skulls, to adequate personal compensation for their services, [Read More...]

New Testament 240

    John 7:14-39 Compare Matthew 13:54; 11:27; Mark 6:2; Luke 4:22; 10:22   Jesus revered and venerated the temple, and, when he was in Jerusalem, he did some of his most important teaching there.   Some types of Christianity claim that he rejected the temple, but this is plainly mistaken.   Several things to [Read More...]

Science: Detached and Purely Rational?

    Science is a wonderful thing.  Fascinating.  It’s made spectacular advances.   But it’s not practiced by hyper-rational demigods who’ve left human passions entirely behind.   See, for instance, the very human story told in Richard Panek, The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality (Boston and New York: [Read More...]

Lost, little, and defenseless in a vast and hostile universe?

    “As a child of God, I am greater than anything that can happen to me.”  (A. P. J. Abdul Kalam)